Petrochristian worldview

The photo of a Nigerian oil spill, above, comes from desmonadespair. It shows the reality of life for people who happen to live over oil fields ripe for extraction. Meanwhile, Eric Metaxas writing for BreakPoint on March 6, 2013 explains Prison Fellowship Ministries’ “worldview” product, emphasis mine.

John Stonestreet and I spend a lot of time on BreakPoint talking about the concept of “worldview,” but what exactly is a worldview, and how can you know what yours is?

Well, to answer the first question, a worldview is a set of beliefs about the nature of reality, and those beliefs attempt to answer the perennial human questions, “Where did we come from?,” “What’s gone wrong with the world and how do we fix it?” and “How should we live our lives?”

Of course, theologians, philosophers, and auto mechanics down through the ages have offered different answers to those questions, and it remains a perplexing topic for many of us.

A few years back, when Chuck Colson, God have mercy on his soul, was railing against grandmothers global warming, I coined the phrase petrochristian, because Colson sounded just like an Exxon Mobile lobbyist. I couldn’t decide who he loved more, that defiant Jesus who carried a Glock, or big oil. Well now we know. PFM loves big oil. The writers at the Colson Center who revere some “traditions” certainly know that Moses didn’t have an automobile, or a mechanic. He and the Jews walked across the Red Sea, and the Egyptians that followed didn’t driving cars, either.

So what are we to make of this. Did Yale educated Metaxas make a grammatical error, or does he want us to believe that the immoral auto-centric lifestyle has been reality “down through the ages”? It’s the latter. If you visit the Colson Center, or Frank Wolf’s favorite government funded charity, the USCIRF, you’d think that the only thing happening in Nigeria is that Muslims are killing Christians who are there to “help” them. It’s a scene right out of Aguirre the Wrath of God.